Lady Gaga Takes the Power Back in 'Chromatica' Track "Free Woman"

From Harper's BAZAAR

• Lady Gaga has released her long-awaited album, Chromatica, full of dance-worthy tracks.

• On the song "Free Woman," she recalls finding self-assurance after surviving sexual assault.

• Standout lyrics include: "I'm still something if I don't got a man / I'm a free woman."

Lady Gaga said it from the start: Her new album, Chromatica, is about healing from pain, whether that pain is her experience with depression, PTSD, fibromyalgia, or her past breakups. Now that the album is finally here, we learn from the track "Free Woman" that the pain she referred to also includes surviving sexual assault.

"I was sexually assaulted by a music producer," Gaga said in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, while explaining the song. "It's compounded all of my feelings about life, feelings about the world, feelings about the industry, what I had to compromise and go through to get to where I am. And I had to put it there. And when I was able to finally celebrate it, I said, 'You know what? I'm not nothing without a steady hand. I'm not nothing unless I know I can. I'm still something If I don't got a man, I'm a free woman.'

"It's me going, 'I'm no longer going to define myself as a survivor, or a victim of sexual assault. I just am a person that is free, who went through some fucked-up shit."

Gaga has been a vocal advocate for sexual assault survivors. She also wrote the Oscar-nominated song "Till It Happens to You" for the 2015 documentary, The Hunting Ground, which sheds light on assault on college campuses, and performed it at the 2016 Oscars with fellow survivors onstage. In 2018, she explained how trauma affects victims while supporting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as she testified against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Just because Gaga made Chromatica, a high-energy album of dance hits, as a way of coping with her pain, that doesn't mean she's entirely healed from the things that have hurt her. "And by the way, I'm not standing over here with a flag going, 'I'm all healed, everything's perfect.' It's not; it's a fight all the time," the singer told Paper magazine for a March interview.

"I still work on myself constantly. I have bad days, I have good days," she added. "Yeah, I live in Chromatica, it took a minute to get here, but that doesn't mean I don't remember what happened. So if you're in pain and listening to this music, just know that I know what it's like to be in pain. And I know what it's like to also not let it ruin your life."

Read the full lyrics to "Free Woman" below.

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